ENGINEERING PROGRESS IN THE U. S. NAVY. 77 



ruption of field circuits. If I were redesigning the Jupiter equipment, I would 

 have it arranged to be handled exactly as a locomotive is handled, by moving a 

 little controller, so that I could stop the ship, or start her, or reverse her, and do 

 everything that is necessary to be done through electrically controlled switches, 

 and the opening and closing of those switches would be the only thing that would 

 have to be done in connection with the whole manipulation of the vessel. 



Now while it may appear to many that all this talk about the electrical pro- 

 pulsion of vessels is a waste of time, I just want to say that there is a great deal of 

 attention being devoted to this subject, and in spite of all contrary opinions that 

 have been expressed there will be a great many electrically propelled ships pretty 

 soon. The subject is being seriously considered by many large ship users abroad, 

 and is being more and more thought of here. It is a thing which should be con- 

 sidered simply on its merits, but if those merits are carefully considered, I think 

 they will be seen to be very great. 



Mr. Ernest H. B. Anderson: — I wish to thank the previous speakers for 

 their remarks about gearing, because all the successful applications of turbine 

 gearing have been carried out by Sir Charles Parsons, and our experience with 

 geared turbines has shown remarkable economy of steam consumption and great 

 success has been achieved with two destroyers, two channel steamers and cargo 

 boats. It may be of interest to you to know that there is upwards of 100,000 horse- 

 power of Parsons geared turbine machinery built and under construction 



Mr. Walter M. McFarland: — Does the gentleman dispute absolutely the 

 statement made in Captain Dyson's paper, that the gearing on the Neptune is 

 running successfully? 



No reply. 



Mr. Anderson: — As regards a comparison between the trial results of the 

 Florida and Utah, I do not agree with the author that the efficiency of the pro- 

 pellers in the former ship fell off greatly, due to adverse weather conditions. To 

 illustrate my meaning, I have plotted the trial trip standardization curves of 

 speed and revolutions for both these ships. The two curves are very much alike. 

 This is shown on Plate 44. 



As you probably know, trial trip conditions vary so greatly that I do not 

 consider it anything out of the ordinary that the Florida required more revolutions 

 for the same speed, even though the propellers of both these ships are of the same 

 dimensions. My opinion is that this difference is largely due to the finish of the 

 propeller blades, and it is quite possible that the blades of the Florida wheels are 

 thicker than those of her sister ship. 



In addition, the Florida made new speed records for United States battleships — 

 on the standardization trial 21.952 knots against the Delaware's 21.44 knots. 

 Further, on the four-hour full-speed trial the Florida made 22.08 knots against 

 21.86 knots for the Delaware, the Utah on final acceptance, 21.92 knots for four 

 hours, driving against a heavy breeze. 



